Vicar's letter

My initial reaction is to think, do they need to tinker with the system yet again, have they not changed things enough in the last 8 years without letting the last lot of changes embed themselves properly. I am also aware that there are still problems with our educational system. I consider these come under four headings.

Firstly, children are incredibly different. Go into a reception class and one finds vast differences: some children speak well and can read, others cannot. Others are, for example, very good at cutting things out while some can hardly use a pair of scissors.  Some are very adept at managing social relationships; others find them more difficult. I believe that each child need to be challenged and helped to develop their unique talents to the highest degree possible; at the same time there are certain basic knowledge and skills that all children, at a time appropriate to them, need to acquire. Secondary school syllabi are still not sufficiently appropriate for our children. No wonder some become bored, play up or stop going to school.

Secondly, there are significant numbers of children who experience real challenges in their lives and if they are not helped deal with these well lead to education disrupted for them and sometimes for other children in their class. The sorts of things I am thinking of here include medical advances in preserving infant lives, lead to more children with learning difficulties of one sort or another, broken relationships can lead to chaotically disorganised lives. Schools need the funding to provide student support services, counselling and better links with health and social services.

Thirdly, today there are real difficulties in organising teachers well. The pressures and expectations and lack of in depth in service training have lead to a drastically short supply of good head teachers. I do not believe that having a ‘super head over two or three schools’ works well. Government policies should make being a head more feasible as well as proving far more training (probably residential) for potential heads and deputy heads. There is a great shortage of gifted teachers in certain subjects. Too many secondary school subjects are taught by non specialists; too many beginning primary school teaching have done a degree in a subject and then done a one year post graduate certificate in education rather than doing a three or four year education course. Again conditions need to be set to attract more gifted and better trained teachers.

Fourthly, government policies do not seem to realise that there is a world of difference about the good ordering of secondary schools if one school serves a large area or if, as in Maidstone, the Borough is served by twelve or so secondary schools. While good things have happened in some schools as a result of their taking specialist college status; there are problems too not least their inability to select pupils most suited to their specialist subjects as well as the fact that other schools in the borough teach certain subjects to a better level than some of the specialist schools.

I do not believe that the proposed legislation will address any of these more pressing areas. From the time of St Augustine coming to Canterbury in 597, the Church of England has had a great interest in, and concern for, education in this country. It is unfortunate that at the moment the Bishop of Portsmouth who is Chairman of the Church of England Board of Education and who can speak in the House of Lords is very ill and unlikely to be able to work over the next six months. His deputy is the Bishop of Dover who knows the area well but cannot speak in the House of Lords; he has to brief the Bishop of Guildford to do this.

I do ask us all to pray for all those in parliament and government and in the church that together they may make wise and good decisions that will help prepare students well for this increasingly competitive, knowledge and skill based rapidly changing world.

Christopher Morgan - Jones 

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